Thanks for the link.

One minor correction: I spent a good chunk of time over in KUWAIT on active duty, back in 2003. My total time spent in Iraq is less than 24 hours (on two "day trips").

Don't want to be accused of inflating my resume.

If you can stand the stench, take a walk over to the Kos slums for their reaction to the letter:

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/10/12/01659/989

They didn’t do a front page post for the letter as far as I could tell. I don’t know which is scarier, Al Qaeda’s future plans or the Moonbats reaction to it.

As you can imagine, the moonbats are having a cow or are totally ignoring the significance of what is going on. They are so blind with their hatered of George W Bush, they can’t see what is really going on. They really need a wakeup call to get them to take off the blinders that they have put on. I have a feeling that Zarqawi and his ilk are going the way of the dodo bird and none too soon.

Oh Shit! I just ventured into the Kos...
I'm going home to clean my guns.

Hot shower, with anti-bacterial soap...
...then clean guns.

Wow. If Zawahiri is reduced to having to ask Zarqawi, one of his subordinates, for operating funds, the good guys must be squeezing al-Qaeda pretty tight.

This needs to be encouraged. Talking about setting a timetable to pull out of Iraq doesn't accomplish this task.

Everyone is so busy talking about the content of the letter that they forgot to ask what Zawahiri's handwriting reveals about himself.

How about that…looks like the Kos kids were right!

Al Qaeda says the documents are fakes. http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20051013/wl_nm/iraq_qaeda_letter_dc_2

Once again we see the moonbat lefties goose-stepping in sync with the sworn enemy of the United States. They are getting pretty good at repeating the talking points.

Did the letter stink? If it smelled like sweaty ass on a crowded city bus in summertime then it must be genuine.

"I say to you: that we are in a battle, and that more than half of this battle is taking place in the battlefield of the media."

OK, so when do when do the likes of the NYT, SF Chronicle, LA Times WaPost, Krugman, O'Dowd, Hebert, Air America start being held accountable for giving aid and comfort to the enemy? Answer: never. Why? Free speech, baby, free speech! At least that's the shield they'll use.

I really think it's interesting how adept AQ & Co. are at manipulting the Western media and know what a powerful influence it has over our thoughts and opinions. They know what "plays" and the useful idiots who'll buy into it. I wouldn't say it's admirable, but I almost have too.

If we are losing any part of this war, it would be the propaganda war for sure.

Nice job SMASH. A very well laid out presentation of his letter! Enjoyed it!

And by all means, if AQ in Iraq says the letter is a fake then it must be so!

I guess Zawahiri isn't gonna see that 100K he was hoping for from Zarqawi. Enjoy another helping of Caverat Raman, Ayman.

File this under: Weird, Meet Bizarro

from a post at Kos:

"I have no reason to believe that a person called Zarqawi actually exists, much less believe that he controls the insurgency in Iraq"

I guess he/she/it missed this.

How...what...why...where...does one come to believe this? I'm officially baffled.

Peter F -

It's simple - they WANT to believe. With every bit of their heart they want to believe that the US is bad, that head-hacking bastards are good. That the 'little guy' 'fighting the power' is the hero here - despite the fact that such heroes would kill them in a heartbeat for being unbelieving scum and feel no remorse afterward (except maybe for getting blood on their shoes... AGAIN, dammit...) - and it gives them a thrill to be on the side that the majority is against. It's pretty well explained in Al Qaeda's Fantasy Ideology - Policy Review, No. 114 (And I apologize for the long exceprt...)

My first encounter with this particular kind of fantasy occurred when I was in college in the late sixties. A friend of mine and I got into a heated argument. Although we were both opposed to the Vietnam War, we discovered that we differed considerably on what counted as permissible forms of anti-war protest. To me the point of such protest was simple — to turn people against the war. Hence anything that was counterproductive to this purpose was politically irresponsible and should be severely censured. My friend thought otherwise; in fact, he was planning to join what by all accounts was to be a massively disruptive demonstration in Washington, and which in fact became one.

My friend did not disagree with me as to the likely counterproductive effects of such a demonstration. Instead, he argued that this simply did not matter. His answer was that even if it was counterproductive, even if it turned people against war protesters, indeed even if it made them more likely to support the continuation of the war, he would still participate in the demonstration and he would do so for one simple reason — because it was, in his words, good for his soul.

What I saw as a political act was not, for my friend, any such thing. It was not aimed at altering the minds of other people or persuading them to act differently. Its whole point was what it did for him.

And what it did for him was to provide him with a fantasy — a fantasy, namely, of taking part in the revolutionary struggle of the oppressed against their oppressors. By participating in a violent anti-war demonstration, he was in no sense aiming at coercing conformity with his view — for that would still have been a political objective. Instead, he took his part in order to confirm his ideological fantasy of marching on the right side of history, of feeling himself among the elect few who stood with the angels of historical inevitability. Thus, when he lay down in front of hapless commuters on the bridges over the Potomac, he had no interest in changing the minds of these commuters, no concern over whether they became angry at the protesters or not. They were there merely as props, as so many supernumeraries in his private psychodrama. The protest for him was not politics, but theater; and the significance of his role lay not in the political ends his actions might achieve, but rather in their symbolic value as ritual. In short, he was acting out a fantasy.

It was not your garden-variety fantasy of life as a sexual athlete or a racecar driver, but in it, he nonetheless made himself out as a hero — a hero of the revolutionary struggle. The components of his fantasy — and that of many young intellectuals at that time — were compounded purely of ideological ingredients, smatterings of Marx and Mao, a little Fanon and perhaps a dash of Herbert Marcuse.

J.

J.,

Thanks for passing along the link! This explains the psychosis—that's the perfect word to use here—behind the thought of the Kos statement I cited above. It still almost renders me speechless as to how someone could come to write a statement, let alone believe it. The statement had the same effect on me as when someone calls the President (or anyone for that matter) a Nazi. My reaction is always, "how do you come to that conclusion?" It's truly a delusion connection to make.

Thanks again. Although I'm sure I still remain baffled—but only slightly.